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I took your advice and purchased a TT BlacX and a WD20EURS. Haven't connected it yet but I understand your sequence to connect it. Now I still have some old recordings on the internal drive I need to watch but I would like to see that what I bought will work so I would like to connect the external, try it, and then remove it. What would be the best sequence to power down and remove the external and use the internal again? Thanks for your reply!

First time you do it, unplug the HR and don't plug the dock in yet. Attach the eSATA to eSATA cable to the HR and then, with the HDD in the dock, plug in the power cord. Wait until the HDD is thru spinning up, you can hold your hand on the top of the HDD and feel it spin up and "burp" when it's done. Then plug in the HR and it should recognize the external HDD. You will see a window on your TV that says the HR is checking your storage device, or words to that effect. Believe RunnerFL when he says the on/off button on the back is fragile. Once you initially use it to turn the dock on, don't use it anymore, pull the plug.

After the first installation, follow RunnerFL's instructions on rebooting. Doesn't work every time, but it does most of the time. If it doesn't work, go back to my original instructions.

OK Rich I successfully restarted with the external as you described successfully although it said it was downloading additional software for quite a while but said if I chose to skip to watch DTV it would download later which I did. Then using RunnerFL's method to shut down I came back up and found the old playlist but guide data was basically missing as well as ratings, pictures etc. The guide has been rebuilding since last night. So was this supposed to happen? I thought going back to the internal drive I would find all intact. What would be your method to disconnect the external? Yes I do believe you regarding the switch as the many reviews on the product state.

OK Rich I successfully restarted with the external as you described successfully although it said it was downloading additional software for quite a while but said if I chose to skip to watch DTV it would download later which I did.

That's something that I wouldn't do. Seems like every time I shut down a download in progress it causes problems.

Then using RunnerFL's method to shut down I came back up and found the old playlist but guide data was basically missing as well as ratings, pictures etc. The guide has been rebuilding since last night. So was this supposed to happen?

To be honest, I never go back to the internal drive once I install an external drive. But the Guide Data was probably lost and it does take quite a while to rebuild it. Same thing happens if you take a large drive and put it on/in a different HR. Gotta have patience, it will come back.

I thought going back to the internal drive I would find all intact. What would be your method to disconnect the external?

I'd just shut down the HR using the Menu Restart option (when it starts to reboot pull the plug) and then pull the power cord on the external device and boot up the HR, making sure you wait at least 30 seconds to reboot the HR.

Yes I do believe you regarding the switch as the many reviews on the product state.

What's really wacky about the on/off switch is that it either fails on or fails off. That surprised me. Should have been built to fail off, I would think. I've got one that failed on and I still use it. If it fails off, the dock is unusable.

OK Rich I successfully restarted with the external as you described successfully although it said it was downloading additional software for quite a while but said if I chose to skip to watch DTV it would download later which I did. Then using RunnerFL's method to shut down I came back up and found the old playlist but guide data was basically missing as well as ratings, pictures etc. The guide has been rebuilding since last night. So was this supposed to happen? I thought going back to the internal drive I would find all intact. What would be your method to disconnect the external? Yes I do believe you regarding the switch as the many reviews on the product state.

guide data, ratings, pictures are all "cached data" that may need to be re-downloaded with each reboot.....

guide data, ratings, pictures are all "cached data" that may need to be re-downloaded with each reboot.....

I don't remember this happening to me unless I did a Guide flush. But I don't remember what I had for dinner last night... Thinking about it now, and if you use only the external drive for a few months the internal drive would certainly need to be updated, I would think.

On my HR34 I'm running RAID 0, for more space. I have the same enclosure on an HR21 though and I'm running RAID 1 on it. Just to test I've pulled a drive out of the enclosure on the HR21 while it was up running and recording to see what would happen. It didn't miss a beat. I then took that drive, wiped it and stuck it back in the enclosure. Again, didn't skip a beat and just started cloning the other drive.

I've also gone as far as to take each individual drive and boot it up as a stand alone drive on that HR21 and they worked.

I have 3 machines running that same enclosure and no problems on any of them. 2 of the enclosures are the older version that doesn't support over 2TB drives and 1 is the brand new version that supports 3TB drives.

So, you are running (2) 3TB disks in a RAID 0 configuration on your HR34 for a total capacity of 6 TB? That's a lot of recordings!!

Just called them and they don't know! But you're buying a modified HR, so right away that goes against the TOS. Just called ACT and the CSR had to check on that and came back and told me it would be owned. BTW, that price is only for today, then it goes back to its regular price of $999. Sheesh.

I have 4x3TB drives in RAID5 for a whopping 8.19TiB of data... have recorded tons of stuff including every NFL playoff game padded by 3 hours and still over 90% free space...

Here comes the "boomerang effect": What enclosure are you using? I was just on Newegg and some of them were decently priced. I think I remember you saying it is a Sans Digital model, but I don't remember which model.

Here comes the "boomerang effect": What enclosure are you using? I was just on Newegg and some of them were decently priced. I think I remember you saying it is a Sans Digital model, but I don't remember which model.

Rich

For my 9TB RAID5 setup I was using this one. There were intermittent micro dropouts on some recordings but I couldn't say 100% it was the enclosure's fault though.

I have 4x3TB drives in RAID5 for a whopping 8.19TiB of data... have recorded tons of stuff including every NFL playoff game padded by 3 hours and still over 90% free space...

Unless your disk controller has a fair amount of cache, I would think the RAID 5 parity data calculation & write could cause a performance issue if you're recording a lot of shows at the same time. I can understand data protection for your recording, but I think today's disk drives are more reliable than the DVR, so it's not necessary.

Unless your disk controller has a fair amount of cache, I would think the RAID 5 parity data calculation & write could cause a performance issue if you're recording a lot of shows at the same time. I can understand data protection for your recording, but I think today's disk drives are more reliable than the DVR, so it's not necessary.

Unless your disk controller has a fair amount of cache, I would think the RAID 5 parity data calculation & write could cause a performance issue if you're recording a lot of shows at the same time. I can understand data protection for your recording, but I think today's disk drives are more reliable than the DVR, so it's not necessary.

That's why cheapest is not always best, and as long as the RAID CPU can keep up with writes, there's no problem...

I have tested 5 record / 4 playback with what I have and it works fine on my HR34. and while the drives are pretty reliable, the DVR's are as well in my experience... have had 2 HDD failures and 1 power supply failure in the time I have owned my HR's...

as long as you can keep the drive cool they are very reliable... I just recently retired some 750's that have been running non-stop for more than 6 years in my server's external enclosure.

The reason I use RAID5 is because I just don't trust RAID0/spanning with that many disks to run that long without a failure...

That's why cheapest is not always best, and as long as the RAID CPU can keep up with writes, there's no problem...

I have tested 5 record / 4 playback with what I have and it works fine on my HR34. and while the drives are pretty reliable, the DVR's are as well in my experience... have had 2 HDD failures and 1 power supply failure in the time I have owned my HR's...

as long as you can keep the drive cool they are very reliable... I just recently retired some 750's that have been running non-stop for more than 6 years in my server's external enclosure.

The reason I use RAID5 is because I just don't trust RAID0/spanning with that many disks to run that long without a failure...

Still, there's always the chance of losing the HR that recorded all the content on the HDDs. Then, you've lost everything. Until D* allows us to use any HR to view content on any HDD recorded within your account, I would not get a five tuner HR and put a huge amount of recordings on it. Just my opinion.

Still, there's always the chance of losing the HR that recorded all the content on the HDDs. Then, you've lost everything. Until D* allows us to use any HR to view content on any HDD recorded within your account, I would not get a five tuner HR and put a huge amount of recordings on it. Just my opinion.

Rich

Yes it's true if the HR dies I lose the content, but I know this and if it happens it happens, and then there's the chance that a software update changes the functionality where it would be possible to do this, and if such should happen, I have a cache of recordings all ready to go to one of my other's if it comes down to that... if not, delete the recordings, and still will have the SL's and other settings stored on the drive...

Yes it's true if the HR dies I lose the content, but I know this and if it happens it happens, and then there's the chance that a software update changes the functionality where it would be possible to do this, and if such should happen, I have a cache of recordings all ready to go to one of my other's if it comes down to that... if not, delete the recordings, and still will have the SL's and other settings stored on the drive...

Well, you've got enough HRs to do a decent amount of backing up valued content.

Thinking of replacing an eSATA drive that's down to a bit under 30% with my HR20-100. I've stuck to 1TB or 1.5TB so far based on recommendations here. Many of the new working set ups involve newer receivers with 2TB drives. Is it safe/reliable to connect a 2TB drive to my HR20-100 (with a TT dock)? Looking at the WD Red or the WD20EURS AV drive.

And if I want to switch back and forth between HDDs (on the same receiver), would this be the appropriate series of steps?

- Unplug the HR.
- Unplug the TT.
- Remove eSATA from HR.
- Swap HDDs.
- Connect eSATA cable to HR.
- Plug in TT and give it several seconds to allow HDD to get up to speed.
- Last, plug in the HR.